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Jupiter/Update Transcript
Transcript An animation shows Tim standing on a high diving board. He looks down and inches forward. He exhales. TIM: Three, two, one… Tim is about to jump, then stops. TIM: 0.9, 0.8, 0.7… Moby appears behind him on the diving board. MOBY: Beep! TIM: Aagh! Moby holds out a letter. TIM: Oh, that looks very urgent. Moby hands Tim a towel. TIM: Dear Tim and Moby, Since Jupiter's made of gas, could we fly a spacecraft right through it? From, Amani. Hey, Amani. It sounds like you've heard that Jupiter is a gas giant. Which does kind of sound like some big cloud you can fly straight through. But, that's not what it's like at all. An animation shows Jupiter. A spaceship flies straight through the planet, as if it were a cloud. TIM: A gas giant is a planet that's made mostly of hydrogen, with some helium. An animation shows Saturn and Jupiter, side-by-side. They then turn into pie charts, one labeled hydrogen (with hydrogen taking up about 96% of the chart) and the other labeled helium (in which helium takes up about 4% of the chart). TIM: Under normal conditions here on Earth, those are gases. But as we'll see, conditions on Jupiter are anything but normal. Gas giants are also... er, giant. Other than the sun, Jupiter is the largest object in the solar system. An animation shows all the planets of the solar system next to each other. Jupiter is the largest after the sun. TIM: More than 1,000 Earths would fit inside it. So we're talking about a ginormous amount of gas here. Jupiter splits into two empty half-circles that look like bowls. A green alien hand pours a box of "Earth Pops" into one bowl until it overflows. The Earth Pops are small circles that look like Earth. TIM: Jupiter has more than double the mass of all the other planets in our solar system combined. In other words, it contains more than twice the amount of matter. The more massive something is, the greater its gravity. An animation shows Jupiter sitting on a scale with all the other planets in the solar system. Jupiter is heavier. TIM: That's a basic force of nature that pulls things together. The greater a planet's gravity, the more stuff weighs there. On Jupiter, you'd tip the scales at about two-and-a-half times your weight here on Earth. An animation shows Moby on a digital scale that says 320lbs. It changes to 800lbs. TIM: That is, if there were a solid surface to put your scale on. MOBY: Beep? TIM: All that stripey, swirly stuff is Jupiter's atmosphere. An animation shows Moby falling into Jupiter's atmosphere. The atmosphere is cloudy with gas. TIM: That's the layer of gases that surrounds some planets and moons. Falling through Jupiter's atmosphere, you'd feel immense pressure building up. An animation shows Moby still falling along with the digital scale, which now has a cracked screen. TIM: That's from all the gas above pressing down on you. Moby frowns. MOBY: Beep. TIM: Yeah, it's tough to picture how gases can be heavy, the way solids are. But if you've ever tried to lift a tank of compressed gas, you'll have some idea. A single tank of propane for a barbecue is pretty tough to pick up! An animation shows Moby handing Tim a tank of propane. As soon as Tim grabs it, the tank sinks to the ground. TIM: So, just imagine millions of those tanks pressing down on you as you fall through Jupiter's atmosphere. Even the atmosphere itself begins to get crushed under its own weight. An animation shows the digital scale now crushed into a little ball. Moby activates a force field around himself. TIM: Somewhere around 600 miles down, the gas compresses into a liquid! As we keep descending, that liquid becomes several times hotter than lava. An animation shows the digital scale bursts into flames. TIM: A few thousand miles in, the pressure is enough to crush carbon into diamond. In fact, a kind of diamond rain may fall here as microscopic bits of carbon get crushed together! An animation shows the digital scale turn into a diamond, and diamonds start falling through the atmosphere. Moby pockets one. TIM: If it weren't for that force field, you'd have been crushed and melted long ago. Somewhere around 12,000 miles in, it's hotter than the surface of the sun. Moby looks at his wrist display. It reads 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit. TIM: And immense pressure transforms the hydrogen into a shiny goo. This substance is called liquid metallic hydrogen. Moby sticks his finger out of the force field bubble. When he brings it back, a waxy-looking goo drips down from it. MOBY: Beep? TIM: Liquid metallic hydrogen is much denser than an ordinary liquid. So at this point, you'd quickly stop falling. Moby bounces to a stop. TIM: But let's say you've got some engines to continue traveling downward. Rockets jet out of Moby's boots, propelling him further down. TIM: Jupiter's strong gravity suggest that there’s a tiny, solid core made of heavier stuff, like iron. Recent estimates put it at around 15 times the entire mass of Earth. Moby crosses his arms. MOBY: Beep. TIM: Okay, that may not sound small, but it's tiny compared to Jupiter! Definite proof of a solid core would be a huge discovery. It would strongly support our understanding of how the solar system formed. An animation shows Moby standing on Jupiter's iron core, staking it with a flag that has his face on it. TIM: It's thought that billions of years ago, most of the material that would form the planets was spread out in a disc of gas and dust. The planets themselves were just rocky cores, and Jupiter's was the biggest. Its powerful gravity captured the majority of all that gas and dust. As each bit crashed into the core, its spinning motion transferred to the planet. An animation shows what Tim describes. TIM: It’s sorta like when figure skaters pull in their arms as they spin. Making their bodies more compact speeds them up. Jupiter has the fastest spin in the solar system because it pulled in the most stuff. The screen splits and the image of Jupiter forming is on the right, while the left screen shows a figure skater pulling his arms in and spinning. MOBY: Beep? TIM: Jupiter spins about 30 times faster than Earth. The force of this rotation transfers to Jupiter's atmosphere, creating those cool stripes. Animation zooms in on Jupiter's stripey atmosphere. TIM: The light ones are called zones, and the dark ones are bands. They move in opposite directions at hundreds of miles per hour. At the borders between them, opposing winds form huge, swirling storms. An animation shows the swirling storms on Jupiter. TIM: The largest is the Great Red Spot, and it's been raging for close to 150 years! It's also wider than our entire planet! An animation shows the Earth plop into the center of the Great Red Spot, with room to spare all around it. TIM: Far below the clouds, Jupiter's layer of metallic hydrogen is thought to be spinning, too. An animation shows Jupiter's hydrogen layer spinning. TIM: Since this stuff is electrically charged, its motion would create a magnetic field. That'd explain why Jupiter has the strongest field of any planet in the solar system. If it were visible to naked eye, it'd look as big as our moon—even though it’s like 2,000 times farther away! An animation shows Tim and Moby looking in the night sky. Jupiter appears next to the moon, with magnetic force fields visible around it. They look close to the same size. MOBY: Beep! TIM: Yeah, Jupiter holds the records for a lot of "strongest" and "biggest" features. It also has dozens of moons, more than any other planet. The first four were discovered hundreds of years ago, by Galileo Galilei. An animation shows Jupiter with many moons orbiting around it. Four moons line up beneath it. TIM: They're called the Galilean moons, and they're almost like little planets. Dust from Jupiter's moons has created a thin system of rings around the planet. An animation shows the thin ring around Jupiter. TIM: Those were found in the 1970s, and a dozen new moons were spotted in 2018. So there’s still a whole lot to learn about the fifth planet from the sun! The animation shows Tim back on the diving board. It's nighttime. TIM: Oh, look at that—we’ve been out here so long, it’s gotten too dark to swim. MOBY: Beep. Moby snaps his fingers. Massive outdoor lights turn on and illuminate the pool. TIM: Well, drat. Category:BrainPOP Transcripts Category:BrainPOP Science Transcripts